The Ma'ale Akrabim massacre was an attack on an Israeli civilian passenger bus, carried out the night of 16-17 March 1954. Eleven passengers were shot dead by the attackers who ambushed and boarded the bus. Four passengers survived, 2 of whom had been injured by the gunmen.

For two weeks Israel has been totally absorbed in a political frenzy focused on Prime minister Bibi Netanyahu and the question - is he an Israeli Winston Churchill or a Richard Nixon. The subject of no less than four full-blown investigations into corruption charges, Bibi was battling for his political life and possibly over serving jail time. He rose to the occasion - at his best, or worst, depending on whether you love or detest him. Contending that he was the victim of a witch-hunt, the PM portrayed himself as an Israel Winston C Churchill and only he can take on the threats to the Jewish state today, first and foremost Iran's vow to annihilate it (besides, Bibi also loves cigars). To the state-witnesses and mounting evidence that he was involved in a series of seedy dealings, Netanyahu pleaded innocent and declared loud and clear to the Israeli public: 'I am not a crook!'

March 11, 1948 - A car filled with explosives blew up in the courtyard of the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem. 12 people were killed, among them Arie Leib Jaffe, one of the founders of the Zionist movement.

On the anniversary of the death of Israels former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, IsraCast brings you a reocrding of Egyptian President Sadat's and Israeli Prime Minister Begin's speech from the signing of the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt in Washington on 1979.

Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and wife Sarah flew merrily off to Washington with his coalition partners in a frenzy - the Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox party, which holds the balance of power in the coalition government, was threatening to topple the government. And why was that? Simply because the cabinet was not ready to pass a new basic law that would exempt all its young religious men, who study all day, from enlisting in the IDF like the rest of the other eighteen-year-old Israeli men and women. Nearly all of the ultra-orthodox are already legal draft dodgers, but the ultra-orthodox politicians have been ordered by their rabbis to press for even stiffer legislation. Such as including it in Israel's informal constitution that is made up of 'basic laws' that can only be altered in the future by an overwhelming majority and not by a simple majority.

Purim is right around the corner here in Israel; and while it is not one of the Seven Biblical Feasts that Jews are commanded to observe, like Chanukah, it has become a staple of the Jewish tradition, and in Israel is celebrated somewhat like a national holiday; and a very colorful one at that.

Levi Eshkol (Skolnik) Born on October 25th 1895, Served as the third Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office.

What could be more historically just! Jerusalem, documented by the Old Testament as becoming Israel's capital three thousand years ago after being captured by King David; where the Israelites, the forefathers of today's Israelis, later built the Holy Temple, now officially recognized in word and deed by the greatest democracy in the world - the United States of America. President Donald Trump has decreed an American embassy will be opened on May 14th, Israel's Independence Day. Jerusalem, whose very name is derived from the Hebrew word 'shalom' for peace, and has always been the heart and soul of the Jewish people ever since they were exiled from the city by the Roman conquerors in 70A.D. The same Roman Empire that even tried to sever the Jews unbreakable bond with Jerusalem changing the city's name to 'Aelia Capitolina' - 'the conquered city'. But they never succeeded, nor did the other persecutors of the Jews during the following twenty centuries of Jewish exile. Throughout the ages Jerusalem always remained at the heart of the Jewish soul:

Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal, may God avenge his blood, was murdered last week. It was the second murder of a settler in Samaria within less than a month. After every terror attack, we keep hearing that the response should be further construction. Another outpost. Another legalization of an already existing outpost. As our dead lie before us, the outcry is received with open ears. And indeed, the government convened to approve another outpost and to discuss another expansion.

The 'Tehran Children' was a group of about one thousand Jewish children, most of them orphans, who reached Palestine through Iran in February 1943. IsraCast brings you a sequence of photos which show the 'Tehran Children' arriving in Israel.

On Feb. 9th, Israel and Iran clashed for the first time when an Iranian drone from Syria penetrated Israeli airspace and was shot down by an Israeli Apache helicopter. A short time later, Israeli F-16 aircraft rocketed the Iranian command vehicle that had launched the drone not far from Russian military personnel also stationed at the Syrian base. A barrage of Syrian Russian-made rockets were then fired at the Israeli jets, hitting one and forcing the two-man crew bailout after making it back over the border into Israeli territory.

Since then speculation has run rife about just what happened and what could be the serious fallout. What is clear is that a new theater of operations is evolving as the Syrian Civil war winds down. First, Iran is striving to turn Syria into a forward base against Israel as it has already done with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. But Israel has announced loud and clear it will take military action to prevent Iran from doing so. In addition, it will continue to intercept Iranian shipments of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. These are two red lines Jerusalem has every intention of enforcing. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad is trying to extend his control over what is left of his battered state. Last but not least is Russian President Vladimir Putin, eager to cash in his dividends after preserving Assad in power by securing a strategic Russian port on the Mediterranean Coast. US President Donald Trump has opted to take a back seat while all this is going on.

Abdullah II bin al-Hussein is the current King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He ascended the throne on 7 February 1999 after the death of his father King Hussein. King Abdullah is a member of the Hashemite family and is reportedly a 43rd-generation direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad.

The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology is an institute of higher education in Haifa. Founded in 1924, the Technion began with an emphasis on the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture, but has since also became one of the top medical schools in the world.

In the space of several, short days - Israeli military and civilian leaders had fired salvos of dire warnings to Lebanon. They all targeted Iran's mounting military presence in Lebanon, Israel's northern neighbor. Tehran already has armed to the teeth its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah force that is actually more powerful than the official Lebanese Army. Remember that Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah triggered the Second Lebanese War with Israel in 2006 by conducting a cross-border raid that killed a number of IDF soldiers and kidnapped two more. Now after Iran and Hezbollah's extensive campaign in the Syrian civil war has kept President Bashar Assad in power, Iran and Hezbollah are now bent on building their military threat against Israel from inside Lebanon. Israeli intelligence has discovered that Iran plans on constructing an installation to assemble precision surface to surface missiles to bombard Israeli targets, probably including its crucial offshore natural gas project in the Mediterranean.

While the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra organization is taking over almost all the territory facing our Golan Heights, and the Islamic State is breaking into Lebanese territory from the north – and after it declared last week that it was "launching the war to liberate the Lebanon region and add it to the Islamic State" – the last thing Hezbollah needs right now is a conflict with Israel.

Its two existential enemies, Sunni organizations al-Qaeda and Islamic State, are outflanking it from the east and from the south, and it is deeply engaged in that area. The definers of the Middle East have changed, and they are no longer Arabs against Israel, but Sunnis against Shiites.

Don't mess with US President Donald Trump. That's the lesson the shell-shocked Palestinians are digesting after his startling decisions recently. First, although the irascible leader of the Free World often seems to let his mouth run on ahead of his brain, there are times when he means what he says. First Trump sent his two negotiators, Greenblatt and Kushner, to start forging a peace proposal. However, they could not get past the total Palestinian rejection of any Israeli rights in Jerusalem (built by King David over three thousand years ago and whose very name is derived from the Hebrew language). So Trump simply 'took it off the table' by recognizing it as Israel's capital. But he also stressed that the White House was not setting any permanent lines - that would be up to Israel and the Palestinians in future negotiations. Nonetheless, Abbas hit the roof and hauled Trump and his negotiators over the coals. In an angry diatribe in Arabic, Abbas added fuel to the flames by referring directly to Trump with the saying: 'May your house be destroyed!' This went over big with his Palestinian audience but less so in the White House.

Avraham Ravitz, an influential ultra-Orthodox Jewish lawmaker who served in Israel's parliament for 20 years, died Monday in Jerusalem. The 75-year-old Ravitz suffered from a heart condition and had been hospitalized since early January.

“A” is a physically disabled Druze youth who had failed 11 subjects by the end of junior high school. He lacked both motivation and self-esteem, and his teachers and parents had all but given up on him. Thanks to an innovative educational program implemented in A’s high school, he graduated with a high-honors matriculation certificate and plans to enter the prestigious Technion-Israel Institute of Technology after two years of voluntary national service as a tutor in his former high school, where he is now seen as a role model.

The next Israeli general election is slated for November 2019. However, recent gains by the Orthodox Jewish sector have sparked a fierce clash with the majority of Israelis who are either secular or semi-religious. The confrontation swirls around the current campaign by ultra-orthodox politicians and some national religious rabbis that has aroused great indignation by other Jewish Israelis. In order to grasp the nature of this ' culture war,' it is necessary to define the various camps involved.